Formula Drift Japan 2026 Rd.4 SUGO Results: Takahashi Wins, Xia Leads

Kazumi Takahashi (高橋和己, #36) won Formula Drift Japan 2026 Round 4 at Sportsland SUGO (Miyagi) on Sunday 12 July 2026, beating Masanori Kohashi (小橋正典, #4) in the final; Naoki Nakamura (中村直樹, #999) was classified third and MingMing (ミンミン, #100) fourth. Championship leader Connor Xia (夏昌浩, #18) went out in the Top 32, and the official standings after Round 4 read Xia 231, RYUMA 230, Takahashi 226, Koudai Sobagiri 225 and Kohashi 220: five drivers inside 11 points with two rounds left. This report was written up on 7 September 2026 from the official result sheet, which is still headed 暫定リザルト, provisional, and every number in it was checked on the official pages on 7 Sep 2026.

Who won Round 4, and how?

SUGO is the Miyagi circuit the series itself sells on its high-speed layout, and the weekend ran to the usual FDJ shape: FDJ2 on Friday and Saturday, the top class qualifying on Saturday morning and running the Top 32 to the final on Sunday. A one-day advance ticket was ¥3,700, ¥4,200 at the gate, with the Friday FDJ2 day at ¥2,400 and parking ¥1,500. Outside race weekends the circuit sells no drift running at all, only grip sessions, which is why our Tohoku drift tracks guide lists it as a place to watch rather than drive. Saturday 11 July was tansō (単走), solo judged runs, two per driver, ranked on the better score. RYUMA (#131) topped it with an 86 backed by an 84; Wataru Masuyama (益山航, #530) was second on 85 and Kiyofumi Hamada (濵田清文, #9) third on an 85 with no second score. Takahashi’s 81 was only 13th, Kohashi’s 80 18th. The Top 32 cut fell at 77, with four drivers on that score and their second runs deciding the order: Ken Gushi (#21), Sam Lucas (#11), Koichi Yamashita (山下広一, #37) and Mike Nakamura (中村マイキ, #66) all made it, and Sheng Nian (#54) missed out on 75.

Sunday 12 July was tsuisō (追走), the tandem chase battles that decide the round, two runs per pairing with lead and chase swapped. The Top 32 removed the championship leader: Xia, fifth in qualifying, lost to 28th-qualifier Toshiki Oyu (大湯都史樹, #10) and left with 20 points. Eighth-qualifier Soshiro Nakamura (中村総士郎, #7) went out to Jake Jones (#947), and Harry Yoza (与座ハリー, #43), 23rd on Saturday, beat Sena (#829) and then Yusuke Kusaba (草場佑介, #77) on his way to the Top 8.

Takahashi’s route from 13th ran through Akihiro Hanawa (塙彰拡, #870), then Sobagiri, the Ebisu West winner who had arrived second in the table, then Oyu, then MingMing in the semi-final. Kohashi came through the other half past Takuto Iguchi (井口卓人, #88), second-qualifier Masuyama, Yoza and Naoki Nakamura. The official sheet lists outcomes, not the judges’ scores, so we will not invent them: Takahashi won the final, and 3 qualifying points plus 100 for the win gave him 103, his first victory of 2026. Kohashi’s 82 was his best score of the season. Naoki Nakamura and MingMing both lost their semi-finals for 64 battle points; the sheet classifies Nakamura third on 68 and MingMing fourth on 67, the qualifying points separating them. RYUMA’s weekend as top qualifier ended in the Top 8 against MingMing, 7 plus 48 for 55, which still lifted him to second in the championship.

The bracket: which battles are worth rewatching?

The Top 32 had already reshaped the day. Beyond Oyu over Xia and Jones over Soshiro Nakamura, Itsuki Fukada (深田一希, #38), 22nd in qualifying, beat 11th-placed Daigo Saito (斎藤太吾, #87), and Pop (#89) beat Chin Hsi-Chun (秦錫鈞, #260). Oyu’s and Yoza’s Top 8 finishes, 50 points each, were the best results either had posted in 2026.

Who leads the championship after Round 4?

The official standings page on formulad.jp carries all four rounds, so the totals below are a straight transcription, checked on 7 September 2026. The before-SUGO column is our sum of the official Round 1–3 columns on the same page.

Four rounds, four different winners: Naoki Nakamura at Fuji, Xia at Suzuka Twin, Sobagiri at Ebisu West, Takahashi at SUGO. Takahashi had arrived ninth in the table, 88 points off the lead, and left third, 5 behind. Xia kept the lead by a single point over RYUMA after adding just 20. The scale, read off the result sheet, is 100 battle points for the win, then 80, 64, 48, 32 and 16 for each earlier exit and 1 for missing the cut, plus 7 for qualifying P1 down to 2 for 32nd, so each of the two remaining rounds was worth up to 107. How that differs from D1’s scoring is in our D1GP vs Formula Drift Japan comparison; the FDJ, FDJ2 and FDJ3 ladder is explained in the Formula Drift Japan guide.

What the series posted from the podium

Eighty minutes later the series put the podium three in front of a camera; the talk show is in the post itself:

Where can you watch the replay?

Saturday’s qualifying and Sunday morning’s Top 32, with the Oyu–Xia battle, are separate uploads on the same channel.

Where the season went next

Round 5 at Gransnow Okuibuki (Shiga) ran on 5–6 September 2026 and Takahashi won that as well, beating Soshiro Nakamura in the final; Xia and Kohashi both missed the Top 32 there, and on our arithmetic that put Takahashi in front of the 2026 championship for the first time. The full report is our Rd.5 Okuibuki results.

That leaves one round you can still be at: the finale at Okayama International Circuit (Okayama), Friday 2 to Sunday 4 October 2026, FDJ2 Rd.6 on Friday–Saturday and Formula Drift Japan Rd.6 on Saturday–Sunday. Advance tickets are ¥3,800, each a single-day pass valid for any one of the three days, ¥5,000 at the gate, and parking is ¥1,650 per car on the day only. The advance channels are Seven Ticket, CN Playguide and Lawson Ticket, online or at the terminals inside 7-Eleven, FamilyMart and Lawson stores, all in Japanese; without a car, the circuit’s own access page ends every route the same way, the Uno Bus from JR Okayama Station to the Fukumoto stop after about 60 minutes and then a taxi of about 20 minutes.

Every remaining 2026 date, FDJ and D1 alike, sits on the event calendar, rechecked against the official pages each month.